[MOD] Lindbrooks Texture Map (LTM) - borders, textures, rivers, terrain, etc.

[Lord of Pain]

His textures are still in use unless it has been very recently got out of hip.

They're not, these are the files you've gotten in NBRT for the past year:

gfx/fx/pdxmap.fxh ---- does nothing; tries to change multi sampling, but it's not.
gfx/trees folders ---- does nothing (or is minuscule); supposed to change tree colours but is obsolete as its overridden by seasonal weather files
interface/mapitems.gfx ---- does nothing; supposed to identify the seasonal trees but is obsolete, see above
map/terrain/border-files ---- half do nothing, other half work but some have some minuscule artifacts because they were saved improperly
map/terrain/fractal_noise ---- works and looks better than vanilla, but enhances a minor flicker that paradox's water render has.
map/terrain/portage ---- works, straits icon
map/terrain/river_normal.bmp --- useless file, copy from vanilla
map/terrain/riverbottom_diffuse --- useless file, copy from vanilla
map/terrain/riversurface_diffuse --- works, rivers have less 'foam'
map/terrain/riversurface_normal ---- works, rivers have less depth
map/terrain/water_border --- does nothing, supposed to make sea border more narrow?
map/terrain/waternormal --- does nothing, paradox made this obsolete IIRC


And if you go back and compare it to what NBRT is supposed to include, it should be clear that mod has been stripped to its bare bones, probably even more.

 

[Ese Khan]

Just wanted to contribute constructive criticism, since Lord of Pain has yet to receive any (either positive or negative). This post will be based entirely on my personal experience and preference, so some of you users might agree or disagree with my priority.

First of all, my general observation on feedback among the HIP team: it's generally positive, and some of the most oft-heard praises include

- Nice snow
- Great initiative, good to see that this is only the beginning

Oft-heard critical observations include

- Rather dark tone overall
- Rather than highlighting the terrain, the mod tones it down

I agree with all of the above observations. To summarize my own take:

- This is better than the version of NBRT+ that had to be brought back when EOOQUE disappeared
- Nice snow
- Water and mountain could use some more accents

To illustrate my points, I'll provide you with comparison shots between LTM and Novus Graphicus, the latter of which had been my map mod of choice since HIP had to re-introduce an older version of NBRT+. Screenshots taken with Novus Graphicus are shown first below.


Shots of the Himalayas

Shots of the Ferghana Valley

In all honesty, I miss the more detailed mountain and hill textures from Novus Graphicus (these are what turned me to the mod half a year ago in the first place). With Novus Graphicus, I am able to see different features of the Himalayas, such as more rigid parts, more "flat" parts, and I can tell apart all the lakes.

I feel like LTM cleans up mountains a bit too much, and I feel this effect in the Ferghana Valley, too. With Novus Graphicus, you see patches of green surrounded by rugged terrain, which add a lot to the dynamic scenery. When zoomed in, I can see that LTM, too, has all corresponding textures; but they are generally too dark in tone to accentuate those terrain features.

Shots showing south of the Caucasus tell a more nuanced story, though:

I think this comparison shot really brings to the fore the core difference in the mountain texture between the two mods: Novus Graphicus's mountain texture is noticeably more brown and has a significantly bright white cap. Coming back to Novus Graphicus after using LTM for a couple of weeks, though, I couldn't help but see some kind of chocolate ice cream in Novus Graphicus. This leads me to believe that my ideal mountain texture is something that's in between LTM and Novus Graphicus, with enough contrast between white cap and the mountain body portion.

On an unrelated note, I love LTM's lake texture much better. The subtle shoreline really does the job here.

So to summarize, changes that would make me love LTM more are

- Brighter textures overall, including water (which I didn't talk about here since Novus Graphicus uses vanilla water texture)
- More color differences between mountain cap, mountain body, and hill textures
- More noise to rugged terrain than smoothing it over


...Which is not to say that dark texture is in itself a sin. For example, dark texture does wonders in estuaries like this one:

But then again, this is your mod. If you find smoothed-over textures more pleasing to your eyes, then you have no obligation to change your basic course. So keep up the good work! I'm one of the supporters for your mod within the HIP team

 

[Lord of Pain]

[snip]

Very helpful, Ese! This is exactly the type of feedback I've been hoping for, truly a thousand thanks I will hopefully be able to start addressing it this weekend

 

[Ese Khan]

Very helpful, Ese! This is exactly the type of feedback I've been hoping for, truly a thousand thanks I will hopefully be able to start addressing it this weekend

No problem! Hope that helped. Also, I just edited the post because I posted the wrong picture for LTM's Himalayas.

 

[Lord of Pain]

No problem! Hope that helped. Also, I just edited the post because I posted the wrong picture for LTM's Himalayas.

Yes, I was never satisfied with the look of Asia, but this is very helpful to me and you put effort in showing differences to me, kudos.

 

[baconohbacon]

Yes, I was never satisfied with the look of Asia, but this is very helpful to me and you put effort in showing differences to me, kudos.

Personally, I hope that you don't change it significantly. I think it looks perfect as is. MAYBE the mountains could use a LITTLE more bumpiness, but not a lot. I think the "darkness" as people put it gives the mod a very unique, more realistic look.

The only thing I would change is to use different borders (and I already did by merging Novus Graphic's borders into this mod). For example, I use border4 and border5 from NG, and use vanilla border1 and border3.

For example, here is how my borders look.

Frankly though, it is easy for me to alter the borders, so it isn't a big deal if you prefer something else. It is just the only criticism I have with this otherwise awesome mod.

 

[Lord of Pain]

Personally, I hope that you don't change it significantly. I think it looks perfect as is. MAYBE the mountains could use a LITTLE more bumpiness, but not a lot. I think the "darkness" as people put it gives the mod a very unique, more realistic look.

The only thing I would change is to use different borders (and I already did by merging Novus Graphic's borders into this mod). For example, I use border4 and border5 from NG, and use vanilla border1 and border3.

For example, here is how my borders look.

[pic]

Frankly though, it is easy for me to alter the borders, so it isn't a big deal if you prefer something else. It is just the only criticism I have with this otherwise awesome mod.

I won't change the darkness if I can help it, my eyes are too sensitive for vanilla's lighting anyway, I might increase saturation by 5 percent overall. I will however be start adding 'regional' textures and put them into use (currently only 17 out of 25 potential textures are being used). That way I can just put in more distinctive textures in otherwise blended terrains such as the Caucasus.

On the topic of borders, I'm very fond of the borders that I made, so it's unlikely that I will replace them outright, I could however experiment with a variety of optional borders, but that'd have to wait though.

 

[zijistark]

I feel like @Ese Khan covered my own misgivings fairly well, but I will go ahead and add that, yeah, the deeply-desaturated look is my only major turn-off. It makes not only the terrain map mode considerably more dull & less vibrant than what I'm accustomed but also the political map mode (presumably due to "bleed-through", but this not my area of expertise-- I wouldn't know). If that weren't an issue I'd be using LTM 100% of the time. FWIW, though, I have been using LTM since a week or so after you posted it to give it a proper vetting and hopefully be able to provide some useful feedback; unfortunately, I have had almost zero time to actually play in that window.

EDIT:

Oh, and while I'm giving criticism, I ought probably also add my favorite part of LTM vs. NBRT+:

Minor rivers are actually sane and look good in LTM. With NBRT+, if you zoom-out to the maximum allowed-- even in political map mode-- to, e.g., take a screenshot of your glorious empire, the minor rivers all over the map are still glistening from space and appear like nasty veins cutting through everything. It's so bad with NBRT+ (and Novus Graphicus, BTW, as they apparently do the same thing with rivers) that I'd turned off river rendering entirely since last August (when NBRT+SWMH was decommissioned). Thank you for allowing me to turn river rendering back on!

 

[G.Strategos]

I won't change the darkness if I can help it, my eyes are too sensitive for vanilla's lighting anyway

Yes please don't, I can't stand Vanilla lighting at all...
I really like you Dark Concept,much better than the rest...

 

[StarlightTW]

I won't change the darkness if I can help it, my eyes are too sensitive for vanilla's lighting anyway, I might increase saturation by 5 percent overall. I will however be start adding 'regional' textures and put them into use (currently only 17 out of 25 potential textures are being used). That way I can just put in more distinctive textures in otherwise blended terrains such as the Caucasus.

On the topic of borders, I'm very fond of the borders that I made, so it's unlikely that I will replace them outright, I could however experiment with a variety of optional borders, but that'd have to wait though.

I'll chip in on the borders thing since I spent about an hour the other day testing the look of various borders from different mods. I'm going to have to say that LTM has my favorite borders throughout. They're distinct where it matters without adding in a lot of artificial lines all over the place. And they let the borders that don't matter so much (within your own demesne, for example) blend well for a look that really shows off the land rather than having borders all over the place.

 

[Barón Rojo]

I would say the better looking borders would be the ones in the (aborted) latest NBRT version:

 

[Lord of Pain]

I would say the better looking borders would be the ones in the (aborted) latest NBRT version:

[pic]

Only the country borders though, IMO, the rest are the same as the ones in the HIP pack and I don't like those. The LTM country borders are subject for change in the next release but that's the only one, and all of the experimental versions do feature a 'one colour per border side', so they're similar but have a different design pattern.

I say experimental because of the problem that arise from the one-colour-system, namely that many countries will end up having the same colour if they can't use colour combinations, and I can see in that screenshot that the unreleased NBRT version had the same problem (see papacy-capua border and borders in the balkans).

 

[zijistark]

Only the country borders though, IMO, the rest are the same as the ones in the HIP pack and I don't like those. The LTM country borders are subject for change in the next release but that's the only one, and all of the experimental versions do feature a 'one colour per border side', so they're similar but have a different design pattern.

I say experimental because of the problem that arise from the one-colour-system, namely that many countries will end up having the same colour if they can't use colour combinations, and I can see in that screenshot that the unreleased NBRT version had the same problem (see papacy-capua border and borders in the balkans).

There were actually several versions of the new borders that were candidates for release in NBRT+ 2, but they were not all made public. We were still debating our preferences between them when EOOQE disappeared.

 

[Barón Rojo]

Only the country borders though, IMO, the rest are the same as the ones in the HIP pack and I don't like those. The LTM country borders are subject for change in the next release but that's the only one, and all of the experimental versions do feature a 'one colour per border side', so they're similar but have a different design pattern.

I say experimental because of the problem that arise from the one-colour-system, namely that many countries will end up having the same colour if they can't use colour combinations, and I can see in that screenshot that the unreleased NBRT version had the same problem (see papacy-capua border and borders in the balkans).

IMO colours doesn't matter much. You can distinguish any country going to political mapmode.

 

[Lord of Pain]

I'm gonna try putting some things to a vote so I feel less like a dictator, I'll start with this particular change: removal of topological shadows from non-terrain maps - you got three options to vote on - personally, I like the look and feel of version #3 but lets try voting. Also keep in mind that you're ONLY voting on the shadows, I will be making adjustments to saturation, brightness, terrain transparency, etc.

Three comparisons (and their quick 'vote' option)

Old # 1 (disagree) ----> Removed # 2 (agree) ----> Removed # 3 (helpful)​

​

VOTE


​

Edit-1: really? I would have preferred an argument but okay then.

Edit-2: less one sided now at least.

Edit-3: I should probably put in an edit to say that the vote is decided, Old # 1 won.

 

[Arko]

removing shadows affects all map modes right ?

 

[Lord of Pain]

removing shadows affects all map modes right ?

No, this is an edit in lua, only removes 'height' shadows from coloured map modes, ie. all map modes except for terrain mode (where it's supposed to be). All other shadows are intact.

 

[Arko]

No, this is an edit in lua, only removes 'height' shadows from coloured map modes, ie. all map modes except for terrain mode (where it's supposed to be). All other shadows are intact.

ok nice then, removing shadows on terrain map would have been a no-go for me.
is the removal of shadows scalable or is it an all or nothing choice ?

 

[Lord of Pain]

ok nice then, removing shadows on terrain map would have been a no-go for me.
is the removal of shadows scalable or is it an all or nothing choice ?

This is scalable

 

[Arko]

This is scalable

thanks. it is interesting.
can rivers be made static in non terrain views and be kept animated otherwise or not ?